Presbytarian Church for 204 years closes

Blauvelt’s Greenbush Presbytarian church situated along Western Highway which started when the British-American War of 1812 was getting underway and Blauvelt was known as Greenbush, after 204 years, the church closed its doors.

Church’s clerk of session Boutzalis spoke in the sanctuary alongside a Greenbush church elder and some appointed by the Hudson River Presbytery to administer the church’s closing, Grosbeck said that many parishioners were exhausted.

“We don’t have the energy to do what needs to be done to keep the church open,” Grosbeck said. “People are tired. They’re old.”

The church has fewer than 50 members, and between 80 and 85 are the average age of the congregation had. In 1970’s, its membership thriving and climbed to 275, but since then, the church’s numbers decreased.

Grosbeck recalls of the church’s lacked of full-time pastor for more than three years, and onetime full choir had gradually diminish to four singers.

Mary Cardenas, an Orangetown historian and director of the Orangetown Historical Museum and Archives said that when the church was built in the early 19th century, it was the “hub of the community”.

“People have come away from churches in terms of their social needs, and they’re using other venues for socializing,” Cardenas said.